


oh, wonder

by Hannahmayski



Series: Supernatural S1 codas [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s01e05 Bloody Mary, Gen, Season/Series 01, and dean beat up two cops, and just fuckin, both look the walking dead, iconic behaviour, just winchester problems, left them on the ground, supernatural season 1 supremacy, they also both nearly got their eyes blown out by mary so they're Not Doing Well, they're both so stupid and unhinged and i love that for them, when u need to book a room in the middle of the night but u and brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27220900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hannahmayski/pseuds/Hannahmayski
Summary: "I can do it," Dean says, trying to reach the wipes in Sam's hand."Can you see your own face?" Sam says.(post Bloody Mary, the boys attempt to clean themselves up)
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: Supernatural S1 codas [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977949
Comments: 4
Kudos: 66





	oh, wonder

By the time they get to the motel, they're both spent. Dean pulls into the parking lot, and it takes at least a minute for him to pry his hands from the steering wheel and another minute for him to convince himself that he even _can_ move to get out of the car.

Sam's slumped against the passenger door, and Dean thumps him on the shoulder hard enough to knock him out of despondently staring at the glove compartment. There's blood all over his face in thick rivets, and his eyes are bloodshot.

He nearly had Bloody Mary blow his brains out twice, and Dean still doesn't know the reason why Sam was right about Mary coming after him.

_Some things I have to keep to myself_.

Sam looks at him as the thought drums through Dean's brain like he can hear it, and Dean slams the thought down before it can go any further.

_Later,_ he tells himself.

But for now, they need a room and a bed and at least a few hours of shut-eye before Dean falls asleep at the wheel.

His vision goes for a second as he stands up, and he grapples for the open door to hold him upright. Finding the cool metal, he can feel himself sway as he stares out into the static, waiting for his vision to slowly bleed back into colour.

He blinks once, twice as the parking lot slowly comes back into view, lit by old street lights that shade the area in a surreal orange that doesn't make Dean feel any better about the rolling in his stomach.

He risks a glance over to Sam, but he's still working on the getting out of the car part of the process to notice Dean nearly take a nosedive. Sam, who, Dean reminds himself again, got the Bloody Mary double dose. This Bloody Mary, who makes people's brains explode. 

If Dean's headache is bad. Well.

Sam leans against the car once he's upright, starting out at something that Dean isn't privy to. His face looks _gaunt_ in the fucked up, Halloween-lighting of the motel parking lot like he hasn’t slept in a year.

"We need to book a room," Dean says eventually, both of them gripping the impala like they'll actually be able to catch themselves if they fall.

Sam mumbles something Dean can't hear, pushing himself off the car door until he's more or less upright. "Need to get the blood off," he says after another moment of silence.

"Right," it comes out garbled and raw. He knows Sam hears it, the way his face twitches, but they both ignore it.

Sam moves to the back door, opens it like it hurts to move and pulls out their shitty first aid kit that's honest-to-god completely useless if one of them actually gets _hurt._ There are wipes in there somewhere, Dean remembers from right after Jessica died and Sam had to go to the hospital for smoke inhalation and shock. ( _stole,_ Sam would have said if he didn't look grey and withered on the hospital bed. _Borrowed,_ Dean would've bitten back if he didn't feel like clawing his own eyes out.)

He tears some of the wipes out and hobbles around to Dean's side. Up close, Sam looks even worse. Gaunt, doesn't really to Sam's face justice. Still, he raises the wipe and dabs at Dean's face.

"I can do it," he says, trying to reach the wipes in Sam's hand.

"Can you see your own face?" Sam says.

And yeah, he has a point.

Sam holds out a clean wipe with his other hand and Dean grabs it to start on Sam's face. There's a lot of blood on Sam's face, although his eyes aren't bleeding like they were in the car when they first drove away, but there's enough there that Dean knows that he needs to watch out for Sam for the next few days.

They must look a little ridiculous, the two of them wiping down each other's faces in the parking lot of some shitty, cheap motel in the middle of the night and Dean distantly thinks they should have stayed in the car for this part. What a way to be inconspicuous. It's been a few hours since they killed Bloody Mary and left behind a ransacked shop of valuable mirrors destroyed and two cops unconscious on the side walk but he hopes news hasn't travelled this far yet, that maybe it will stay local long enough for Sam to get back on his feet.

There's some blood that's dripped onto Sam's shirt that Dean can't do anything about until they find some stain remover and a laundromat.

"I can go in," Dean says. They need to go into reception and actually get a room before one of them actually eats the pavement for real. He hopes Sam will stay out by the car but knows better before Sam's even opened his mouth. It's that kind of night.

"Fine," he says before Sam can say anything. He takes Sam's elbow and steers him away from the door to shove their mostly useless first aid kit in the back seat and shut the door.

The reception lighting is somehow more fucked up than outside in the parking lot. None of that Halloween, over-sweetened orange, just a bright _white_ that makes Sam look like a hollowed-out corpse and apparently the woman at the desk feels the same if her wide eyes glued to Sam and the sudden halt in her movements mean anything.

Dean knows he doesn't look like the poster boy of health either, but he knows he _does_ look better than Sam, so he moves between the two of them, so Sam is more behind Dean and the woman's face is brought to Dean's instead. He cracks the best smile he can, knows it looks authentic because he's not an amateur, and the woman - Heather, from the name tag - finally turns to him.

"One room, two queens."

She nods, taking Dean's credit card and hurrying through the motions too quickly. Dean knows they'll be leaving in the morning with Heather taking such note of them, the two of them won't be forgotten by her easily. So much for resting up.

The trip between getting away from Heather and getting to their room is an embarrassingly slow show of how much they're both hurting. It's more of a pathetic shuffle and then an actual walk and Dean's just thankful that it's ass o'clock at night - or morning? - and no sane person is awake to see it.

Sam manages to get his shoes off and then his jacket, but apparently anything beyond that is too much to ask of him and Dean just hopes he's exhausted enough that he'll get a good couple of hours in and his brain will stop torturing him for the night.

It doesn't help with summoning Mary had everything to do with Jessica, ripping open fresh wounds like child's play. Doesn't help that he thinks whatever happened that night or leading up to it is too much to tell Dean.

He worries about that. It doesn't matter what happened at the moment of Jessica's death or before it, Sam couldn't have stopped it. But that doesn’t matter because Sam's convinced himself that her death is on _him._

Dean doesn’t know how to fix this, even if he did know whatever it is Sam thinks he did. He knows grief, he knows what it's like to miss someone, to have a hole in your heart where they used to be, but Mary was Sam's mother too and Sam was _living_ with Jessica. They were much, much more than a one-night stand. 

Nothing Dean can do is going to make it better and that's the worst part about it.

He lowers himself onto the bed, groaning as his muscles scream at the tension finally releasing.

His shoes and jacket are on the ground somewhere near the end of the bed, but Dean doesn't think he can manage anything beyond that, either.

Sam thinks Dean can't help him and maybe he's right, but that's not going to stop him from trying. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come for the nostalgia, stay for Dean getting irrationally upset about the parking lot lighting


End file.
